Bees accept CPIT hospitality

CPIT’s School of
Food and Hospitality will extend a warm welcome to thousands
of bees tomorrow and tutor David Spice hopes the school’s
new beekeeping initiative will inspire other Christchurch
businesses to offer their rooftops to bees too.

“We are
the garden city and at CPIT we are right on the doorstep of
the proposed green frame. We need bees to help us maintain
the environmental health of the city,” he said.

Spice, a registered bee keeper, has placed an initial
two hives on the Food and Hospitality School roof which will
be opened tomorrow The multi-floral honey harvested from
next year will be sold in the Pantry café on campus and the
hives will be used as teaching tool as well as a way to
contribute to Christchurch’s environmental health.
Bees’ importance to sustainability in Christchurch and
globally cannot be underestimated, Spice said.

“No
bees, no pollination, no food. It’s that simple. Our food
system and our ecosystem rely heavily on bees. A lot of
hives were wiped out by the earthquakes, such as the ones on
the Science Alive building; they have gone. However,
Christchurch has continuous flowering that can sustain bees,
so I am hoping other businesses will see what we are doing
and we can put hives on their roofs too.

“Bees are
amazing and this is a good way for our students to learn
about them – how important they are to the food chain, how
honey is harvested and how to care for bees as well,” he
said.

Spice has been practising his beekeeping skills on
hives at his home for the last year. He has learned how to
keep the Queen bees happy, how bees navigate their way back
to the hive (inbuilt GPS) and what harvest yields might be
(based on about a dessertspoon of honey per year for each
worker bee). Spice is willing to establish hives on other
rooftops - all that is required is a little flat roof space
and a taste for honey and he will do the rest.

Bee
numbers have declined internationally due to diseases such
as the varroa mite and American foulbrood, and are in
shortage worldwide.

Dennis Walker, CPIT School of Food
and Hospitality Manager, is delighted that CPIT’s beehive
initiative will allow the school to contribute to
sustainability in Christchurch and also produce food at the
school. “This sort of initiative is typical of our tutors
who consistently contribute to community wellbeing in
different ways, from cooking big charity dinners to helping
cook hangi at CPIT and now beekeeping.”

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